I'm Fine
by AelysAlthea
Summary: Two words. Just two words that were meaningless in meaning a thousand different things. Neil never quite understood what they meant until he had the chance to leave his lies behind him. (FULL SUMMARY WITHIN)


**Summary**: Two words. Just two words that were meaningless in meaning a thousand different things. Neil never quite understood what they meant until he had the chance to leave his lies behind him.

In abandoning his mother's words, for the first time Neil could allow himself to admit that perhaps he was lying to himself most of all. He wasn't and had never been fine.

At least not yet.

**Rating**: T

**Tags**: Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Missing Scenes, Episodic, Referenced/Implied Violence, Referenced/Implied Child Abuse, Referenced Canon Character Death, Canon Compliant, Recovery, the origin story of Neil's I'm Fine, 5+1 fic

* * *

It hurt. It hurt so badly it felt like it still burned.

Dry sobs clawed their way upNathaniel's throat, but the only sound to pass his lips was a choked mew. It didn't help - not the sound, and not the firm hand of his mother's hand on the back of his head, pressing his face into her bony shoulder. Her fingers were a vice hold him still, demanding his silence, and her other arm clutching him around his shoulders and pinning him against her just as tightly. As a warble made its way from Nathaniel's mouth, she clutched him even harder.

"Quiet, Nathaniel," she said, low and harsh. "That's enough. Quiet."

The bathroom barely echoed her worlds, swallowing them into invisibility and oversight far more effectively than the closed door. It was dark. Dark and cold, and felt even more so for the thudding heat chewing through Nathaniel's skin to the bone. Nathaniel cringed at his mother's words,, pressing his face harder into her shoulder. He knew better. He knew he wasn't supposed to make a sound. No murmur of noise. No suspicious glances. No ducking his head and turning away just a little too quickly. He'd known, should have known, and yet…

It hurt so, so badly. He couldn't help the gasping utterances of pain.

"I said be quiet," his mother repeated, just as hoarse and whispered herself but a little harsher.

Nathaniel tried. But burns hurt. They hurt really bad. Worse than a cut or a slice, worse than a slap or the thump of knuckles. Nathaniel hadn't ever been burned before, but he didn't think he'd ever forget the smell, the aching, the searing sting that still radiated through his shoulder and thumped hard, harder, with every heartbeat.

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts…_

Nathaniel knew to hold it back, knew better, but a whisper of noise still escaped his lips once more as his mother shifted against him. As she turned, glancing over her shoulder towards the door and pressing his face against her, the slight movement sparked a jolt of pain and his whimper slipped out before he could catch himself.

His mother's snapped her attention back to him. Her fingers hooked into his hair, twisting as she pulled him away from her and tipped his head back to meet her gaze. Her thin face was shadowed and gaunt but her eyes were as keen and unblinking as ever. "You're fine," she said, an insistent whisper that was more like an order than an assurance. "You hear me? It's just a burn. You'll be fine."

"It…" The word was a croak, barely audible, and didn't echo even a little. "It hurts, Mom."

"Of course it does," she said, even quieter than before. Despite the shadows, Nathaniel saw her gaze flick to his shoulder, exposed from where she'd stripped him of his shirt minutes before as she'd all but dragged him into the bathroom. "But you're fine. You are fine, Nathaniel."

Nathaniel didn't feel fine. He didn't feel fine, or okay, or - or anything but hurting. The heavy strike of the hot iron, painful in its force before the searing burn erupted in a fiery rage to override the brutal thump. His father's face had been hard, the lines severe and forbidding, and his arm swung with an offhanded swing as though it were nothing.

It didn't feel like nothing. That burn - it felt the least like nothing that Nathaniel had ever known in his life. It took everything within him to keep his lip from trembling, his sobs from spilling forth, and the prickle of tears from falling. But he could, he would, because his mom said -

"You're fine." Her fingers twisted again, shaking slightly in their grasp upon his hair. "It's going to be fine, Nathaniel."

The murmur of his father's voice seeped through the cracks around the door, but they were distant and distracted as he spoke to Patrick in clipped tones and ordered Lola with a curt word. Minutes passed, more minutes that felt like hours with every throb in Nathaniel's shoulder, and… and…

Nothing. He wasn't coming in. Nathaniel hoped, pleaded with whoever made such decisions, but…

He didn't come. Even with the pain pulsing in his shoulder, radiating up his neck and down his arm, Nathaniel realised it with a creeping, blessed breath of relief.

When his mother's fingers on the back of his head eased slightly, Nathaniel knew it would be okay. Just for a moment, for a little while maybe, they were alone. They could hide from sight. His father was 'somewhere else'. He hurt - still hurt, it still hurt - but when his mother straightened and moved to the vanity, it was as much confirmation of his relief as he could hope for.

"Mom," Nathaniel whispered, shuffling on his knees to follow her movement.

The faucet turned on at a dribble, a faint tinkle of water immediately silenced as his mother ducked a hand towel beneath the stream. She glanced towards him, her lips thinned. "Sit still," she said. "Don't move and it will be fine."

"But -"

"Nathaniel."

He fell silent. He remained silent as she drenched the hand towel and ducked to his side to press it to his shoulder. He held his tongue against a whimper, and then again as his mother clicked her tongue and gestured him to his feet, all but lifting him into the faucet to tuck his throbbing, burning, aching skin beneath the water.

"You're fine, Nathaniel," she said, again and again like a mantra. "It's fine. It'll be fine. Just don't do it again and you'll be fine."

Nathaniel wasn't sure what he'd done wrong when the visitors had come asking questions. He didn't know why his father reached for the iron and swung with a vengeance the second the front door slammed closed. He didn't know - hadn't known - that burns would hurt so much.

But his mother said it was fine. That it would be fine. Nathaniel didn't quite know what that meant either, but he clung to the sliver of hope it provided like a drowning man would a lifeline. It didn't help much, but even a little was better than nothing.

* * *

"Faster! Move faster, Abram!"

He tried. He was already running as fast as he knew how, muscles straining with speed and endurance. But with his mother's words, he threw himself forward with a renewed bout of speed.

She never called him Abram. Not unless it was terribly, life-threateningly important.

The night was a sea pf broken shadows. The street lamps were spaced far enough apart that Abram felt himself swallowed, blessedly hidden, for the split seconds between them. The slap of their racing steps echoed off the boundaries of the sleeping street, and the air before plumed in an opaque mist with every ragged breath he took before being lost behind seconds later.

Abram ran. He ran with everything he had because that was the only thing he could really do.

The darker smear of his mother's figure flew ahead of him with the speed of a fleeing deer. She bounded down the sidewalk with barely a backward glance. The backpack thumped against her shoulders, the keys jangled in the clutch of her hands, and with each step she seemed to stretch ahead of him just a little further.

She was fast. So incredibly fast. Abram poured every ounce of his strength into following her.

His father's house lay streets behind them, a silent, hulking shadow with shuttered eyes, for the moment ignorant to its escaping occupants. Streets away, half a dozen turns and just as many blocks, and Abram swore he could still feel the looming threat it promised nipping at his heels.

"We're leaving," his mother had said barely an hour before. "Before your father returns home we'll be gone."

Gone where, Abram didn't know. A twist of fear had curdled the contents of his guts with her words, and the thought of his father, of the hooded, heavy weight of his gaze, accusing misbehaviour and insolence, was nearly debilitating. But his mother said they were leaving, and she called him Abram. It was impossible not to follow her lead.

_Move faster, _Abram chanted to himself, just as his mother snapped an identical order over her shoulder. _Move faster, faster, faster…_

Heavy steps. Harsh breaths. A skidding curve around the next corner and a near miss as a car - seemingly the only one still moving on the sleeping street - nearly ran his mother over. Abram didn't slow as the car honked, as his mother leaped out of the way and skittered back onto the sidewalk before high-tailing it down the sidewalk once more. He didn't look over his shoulder as the sound of the engine rapidly faded away.

When his mother finally stopped, another skidding, jerking stop, Abram almost crashed into her. He caught himself on the hood of the car she'd paused alongside as she fumbled the keys, her gasps as short and sharp as his own. Abram didn't recognise the car, didn't know the house it was parked before, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that they were leaving, and that meant there was a threat. A threat that could only take one form because there was only ever one thing worthy of fear.

Abram's chest was heaving as he threw a glance over his shoulder. The road was still silent, still empty of all but immobile cars and sleeping houses, but it wasn't a comforting silence. Such quietude only promised being eventually broken. Despite the heaviness of his heartbeat thundering in his chest, the _thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump_ of his heartbeat burning through his limbs, Abram felt a horrified chill.

_Just what the hell have we done?_

"Get in the car, Abram."

His mother's snap was like a cold dash of water. Abram swung back towards her to see her already piling into the car. The engine was running before she'd closed the door, and the headlights beamed in a fierce glare a moment later. Abram rounded the bonnet in a second, and the car was rolling into motion a beat after his foot had left the ground.

"Mom?" he asked, slamming the door shut behind him and sparing her a glance as his mother peeled from the curb and started down the road. He thumped back into his seat slightly with the speed of her acceleration. "Mom, what's going on?"

"We're leaving," she said, just as she had before. "It's not safe with your father anymore."

"What? But - but Mom -"

"If we stay any longer there's no telling what will happen."

The twist in Abram's gut tightened further. "What do you mean?" He shot a glance out the back window of the car to the empty road beyond. However bare the darkness, it felt like only a temporary respite, because Abram's father… If there was a reason they were leaving, a reason it wasn't safe, then that meant that his father was…

Renewed fear seized Abram's chest and squeezed. "Mom, we can't just leave." Even to his own ears, his voice sounded nearly hysterical. "If we leave then he'll - Mom, he'll -"

"We'll be fine." His mother's glance was wide eyed and fierce in the momentary illumination of a passing street lamp. The car jerked forwards even faster to punctuate her words, flying down the calm, oblivious suburban street. "We'll go to your uncle and we'll be just fine, alright?"

Abram opened his mouth to reply, to say it was impossible, but closed it a second later. Shoulders tight, fingers digging into the sides of the cushion beneath him, he hunched into the seat and turned forward instead. In short succession of a handful of turns, dark streets morphed rapidly into the traffic and vibrant life, the illumination of a city that never properly slept, and Abram held that silence.

If his mother said it was fine then it would be. It had to be. It always had been, so Abram could only trust in the precedent that her confidence gave him.

* * *

"Enough of this," she snapped, her chin jutting forward with the kind of no-nonsense frustration that she wore so often. "You will take it off and clean yourself up properly before I cut it off you."

"I'm fine," Stephen replied just as sharply. "I don't need it."

"You bloody well do." Flinging an arm out, his mother pointed to the bathroom. "Now."

"No."

"I said now."

"I'm fine how I am! I'm just tired, I -"

Like a viper, his mother's hand darted out and caught the shoulder of his vest. She wasn't any taller than him these days, but Stephen doubted there would ever be a day were she wasn't capable of bodily hauling him off his feet. His mother had too much ironclad willpower to be overcome by something as negligible as physical weight discrepancy.

"It's been days, Stephen," she said, her reprimand as sharp as her glare. "You've still got blood on you. Go and clean up properly."

Stephen glared in return. It was a battle he knew he wouldn't win, but he'd fight to the end. Chronic fear was exhausting, but he'd had enough experience with it that a few days of intensified distress didn't wear him down. He could give as good as he got.

Besides, she was wrong. There wasn't any blood. None except that staining the edge of the bulletproof vest he couldn't bring himself to take off.

The impact of the shot still rocked Stephen to his core. Days, his mother had said, but days wasn't nearly enough time to forget. The weight of it slamming into him. The delay as shock overwhelmed him, then the puncturing stab of pain that blossomed like a lightning bolt striking him bone-deep.

No one ever said how much a fucking bullet wound hurt. None of the goddamned cop shows he couldn't bring himself to properly watch, and not his mother. Definitely not his mother, not even when he'd stitched her up not a year ago for one such shot herself.

It had been close this time. So close that Stephen still found himself struck on the hour with just how nearly he'd lost his life. He'd barely slept since the incident, couldn't close his eyes without seeing his father's men and the barrel of a gun pointed his way. He couldn't think but to curse that he'd moved too slowly to dodge for cover, even as he thanked that his usual bad luck granted him with just enough space to avoid a deadly wound.

If he'd been shot and killed, a bullet to the heart, what then? What would have happened? After everything, after so long, it would just… end?

Once, just the previous day, a flicker of bliss at the thought had skittered across Stephen's mind. For it all to end… It would almost be nice, right? For it to stop? For the running to finally be over? The feeling hadn't lasted long. Only enough for a slight shift on the mattress at his back, the press of his mother's bony spine against him, to erase it entirely and reinstall fear with renewed force.

So what if he was dirty - which he wasn't, but so what if he was? Stephen wasn't yet ready to peel away the tight, reassuring weight of the vest. Not unless he had no other choice.

Unfortunately, when his mother put her foot down, there was never another choice.

With the hand grasping the shoulder of his vest, she jerked him towards her until her face was barely an inch from his own. Her eyes narrowed, as flinty and fierce as they never failed to be, and it was all Stephen could do to meet them and maintain his own glare. Nothing - not ignoring the incessant twinge in his side from the bullet wound nor the exhaustion weighing him down - was as hard as that.

"You didn't die," his mother said. "Do you hear me?"

"I know," Stephen said shortly.

"This is ridiculous. Get a hold of yourself."

"I am. I have."

"You're acting like a child." Turning him with a firm clasp on his shoulder, his mother propelled him across their shoebox motel room towards the bathroom. "Clean yourself up. If I have to do it myself, there'll be hell to pay."

Stephen scowled at her over his shoulder. She stared back. He lifted his chin, and she folded her arms stoutly across her chest. When her eyebrow twitched, Stephen knew he was playing with borrowed time.

Cursing silently, he turned his back on her and all but stomped into the bathroom. If he didn't slam the door, it was only because he knew better than that. To make loud noises, to draw attention to them even in a motel that they would be staying in only overnight, was an unnecessary risk that they couldn't afford to take. He wasn't so angry as to be foolish.

The bathroom was dingy, smelt appalling, and the chipped porcelain was so faded and streaked with stains that it could hardly be called white anymore. Blackness spread like growing fungi from between the tiles at Stephen's feet, but he barely paid it a thought as he toed out of his shoes and shuffled towards the vanity. He paid even less attention to the hollow-eyed, pale reflection that appeared across from him in a mirror as scummy as the rest of the room.

His side hurt. Really hurt, and so much that it was impossible to ignore. His head throbbed with the headache of sleep deprivation, and his muscles still ached from the split-second fight and successive flight to escape from days before. Days, it was. Only days. And his mother told him to get over it.

Clenching his jaw, Stephen began the slow, reluctant chore of unfastening the vest. If his fingers trembled slightly, it didn't matter. There was no one there for the moment to see such a telling sign of weakness. Not even his mother.

"Do you need help?" she asked through the door.

"No," Stephen replied. He was almost proud of the steadiness of his own voice, despite the shivers afflicting him and the shaking making the action of undoing the last buckle almost impossible.

"Are you sure? Don't injure yourself further because you're stubborn. We have to leave early tomorrow."

Stephen shot a glare he didn't really feel at the door. Even that seemed too hard. "I'm fine," he said and, with a final effort, stripped himself of the last layer of his protective vest. It was chilling in how exposed he felt by its loss, but for the moment it didn't matter. For the moment, there was no one there to see.

* * *

Burning flesh was a smell he would never be forgotten.

It triggered memories, that smell. Not always but sometimes. Memories of a heavy weight striking him, of the mind-numbing pain and the searing agony that faded to an incessant ache persisting for days afterwards. Memories of pink skin, peeling skin, skin left scarred and only a little faded.

Those memories rose to the fore unexpectedly at times, but Neil was able to brush them aside most of the time. Too many fast-food vendors, too many cheap take-out stores and cheaper TV dinners, that smelled just like the scent of cooking for him to be struck senseless every time. It didn't bother him anymore, and he'd long ago mastered the skill of mechanically eating through the roiling in his belly.

What he wasn't yet sure how to overcome was feelings elicited when the tinge of gasoline overlaid that smell. The crackle of open flames, the splinter of metal as it crumpled, and the underlying, ever-present charring of flesh not unlike that of a beef patty frying in a pan. Neil didn't know how to force himself past that smell, nor the sights that accompanied it. He didn't know if he could ever forget the smoking carcass of the car he'd cast alight, nor the feel of smooth bone fragments in his hands as he stuffed them into his mother's carry bag before slinging it over his shoulder.

His mother. Neil didn't know if he could ever forget her, nor anything that had anything to do with her. He didn't know if he wanted to.

Trudging down the open highway, Neil barely saw the bitumen under his feet. He registered even less the white line he walked on that marked the edge of the road, one foot in front of the other like a gymnast balancing upon a beam. He barely saw it but he knew it was there because it was the only thing that kept him on track as he left the source of those memories behind him, stepping forwards, ever forwards, and away from the destruction of his life.

And his mother. Away from her, too.

Vehicles passed. Fast and slow, heavy trucks and sleek sports cars. Someone honked, but Neil barely registered it on the edges of his hearing before the whizzing flight of the car responsible zipped past him. He was beyond caring what passers-by thought of him, beyond worrying if his lonely wandering down an empty road, miles and hours from the nearest town or city, would raise eyebrows and set tongues wagging. When he'd left the beach of his mother's grave, chin high and resolute as he followed her final orders, it had mattered. When he'd climbed onto the first bus, hitchhiked with the first truck driver, it had matter.

But now?

Another car honked, and Neil raised his heavy head to glance detachedly over his shoulder. Really, was all the beeping necessary? Couldn't the drivers in their shiny cars going about their perfect business leave him alone? He followed the movement rather than the image of the car itself as it drew towards him, and it was only as it pulled to a stop at his side that he realised he'd stopped walking himself.

When had he stopped? More importantly, why had his feet stopped moving without him telling them to? Neil wasn't sure, but for the moment he couldn't bring himself to care. His mouth still stung with the taste of vomit that had passed from his lips minutes - hours? - before, and the emptiness left in his belly was about all he could feel.

He blinked heavily at the car as, right before him, the passenger's side window wound itself down. He stared blankly within, seeing but not registering as a blast of air-conditioned coolness washed over him. The woman that leaned onto the seat at her side, peering out the window with a curious tilt to her head, offered him a smile he couldn't return.

"Hey," she said with a slight tip of her chin. "Where are you headed? Can I drop you somewhere?"

Neil blinked. Could she? "No," he said without thought.

The woman frowned. She was young, he realised. Relatively young. Younger than his mother was. Than she had been. "You sure? It's damn hot out here today."

Was it hot? It was, wasn't it? Summer. Too hot to be walking along the edge of a highway in the middle of the day. Neil glanced vaguely towards the sun overhead before turning back to the woman. He shrugged. "It's fine."

"Really?" Her frown deepened. "'Cause you look like you could use a bucket of ice water over your head and a cold drink."

Neil almost scowled. He might have if he'd been able to conjure the energy and the care to do so. Instead he shook his head and turned back to the stretch of road at his side. A protesting voice in the back of his head told him to take the lift, to use the offer that presented itself, but he didn't want to. Right then, he didn't want to do anything but walk away.

"I'm fine," he said as he turned from the woman and her car. "Thanks anyway."

He'd walked a dozen steps before the sound of the car bespoke the woman accepting his words and pulling away. Neil didn't look up as it drew slowly past him before picking up pace. His gaze returned to the white line beneath his feet, though even that faded into detached notice as he fell back into his thoughts.

_I'm fine_, he thought, told himself, chanting over and over. _I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine..._

And he was. He would be fine. Maybe in an hour or so, or a day, but with enough time Neil would be fine.

* * *

Sparks skittered across the insides of his eyelids as he pressed the heels of his palms into them, but they didn't erase the images imprinted on his brain. Exhaling slowly, Neil dropped his hands from his face and folded his arms on the table before him. His gaze followed, locking onto the grain of the wood that patterned the surface in smooth, interconnected lines. Those lines didn't replace the images either.

The cellar had been dark, and Neil could still feel the cold hardness of cement where it had pressed against his shoulder. The stagnant, damp smell that hung in the air, the dim light that wasn't quite gloomy but looked only a shock or two from shorting the lightbulb entirely. The hard walls of the confining room, the unpolished stairwell, the immoveable door…

Lola, her smile and the twitch of her deadly fingers. Romero and his blank-faced apathy. Malcolm and his equally dismissive gaze, and Patrick DiMaccio who oozed danger from his pores like the sweat that had prickled Neil's brow when he'd woken that morning.

And his father. Nathan, as immovable as the closed door and even more impossible to surpass.

It had been days since Baltimore, days since Neil had been reunited with his team and then again after the detectives were finished with him. Days too that they'd been tucked away in a little wooden cabin that was 'little' only by Allison's definition of the word. Those days had done wonders for Neil, and his taut nerves almost felt ready to begin loosening from their incredulous tension.

When night fell, it was another story. A story that placed out in morbidly stark relief, only driven away by eyes snapping open and the stumbling seeking of morning light. That light did wonders for Neil. It was nothing like the dark confines of the basement, nor the smothering weight of Castle Evermore. More like… like…

Like sitting atop an empty roof, chilled to the bone but bathing in the heatless sunlight like a flower drinking in the radiance. That radiance beamed through the nearest window and gently caressed Neil's back, and while it wasn't warm, it was comforting nonetheless.

The cabin was quiet. It creaked slightly, but not unpleasantly. The shuffle of muffled movement on the upper floors bespoke familiar bodies waking from sleep and clambering into reluctant consciousness. The grandfather clock in the living room _tick-tock_ed with calming regularity, and the sound of breathing, the only mention of the company he shared, was oddly soothing.

Neil's nerves might still be tightly strung, but they unwound just a little in the right company. And though Andrew might not say anything, might not be doing anything, his presence made the morning damn near perfect.

Glancing across the room, Neil took a moment to regard Andrew where he stood leaning on the windowsill. Mid-morning light illuminated him into a stark contrast of paleness and dark clothes, and his stillness cast him like a watchful statue where he eyed Neil in turn across the distance between them. The open window invited the curling whisps of crisp morning air within, carrying with it the smell of smoke that rose from the butt wedged between Andrew's fingers.

Inhaling, Neil closed his eyes again, and this time the images that rose to the fore were a little less defined, a little easier to brush aside. Not entirely erasable, but less abrasive. Neil could almost smile as the twinge in his chest eased a little further, too.

_It's fine,_ he thought, breathing in another lungful of smoke-tinged air. _It's going to be fine._

The sound of footsteps - heavy, slightly staggered, and definitely Matt's - drew his eyes open again and over his shoulder to the stairwell. Neil watched as Matt appeared, yawning and scrubbing a hand through the mess of his ungroomed hair. He gave Neil a lopsided smile as he all but staggered into the kitchen, propping himself against the counter.

"Morning," he said, his words still thick with sleep. "You're up early."

Neil shrugged. "It's not that early."

"Mm." Matthew spared a glance for Andrew. The barest frown touched his brow before he turned back to Neil. "You been awake long?"

With a tip of his head, Neil hummed a neutral reply.

"Couldn't sleep?"

Neil offered another shrug.

Matt grunt. Crossing the room, he stopped at Neil's side and dropped a hand onto his shoulder. Big and warm, it was a comfortably heavy weight. "If you need anything, just ask, yeah? Anything."

Neil nodded. "Thanks, Matt. I'm fine, though." As Matt widened his eyes pointedly, Neil bit barely bit back a snort and the urge to roll his eyes. "Mostly fine. Really."

Matt squeezed his shoulder again. "You know, you don't have to be. It's okay to not be okay, okay?"

"Could you fit in one more okay in that sentence, do you think?"

Matt grinned. He gave Neil's shoulder a gentle before finally releasing him. "I mean it. Anything you need, Neil."

Neil nodded. He knew that. He truly did. It might take more than knowing to act upon it, just like it took more than knowing he wasn't quite fine to admit it, but Neil would get there. "Thanks," he said again. "I'll be fine."

Matt's glance as he turned back to the kitchen was slightly chiding again, but his smile didn't falter. Neil knew he understood. It would take time, for sure, but Matt knew as well as Neil did that he could get there. He would.

* * *

Through the darkness, Neil could only just see his scars.

They were a spider web of pale lines. A spider web interrupted by the perfectly formed, identical circles of coiled burns, faded slightly into glossy tissue. Neil knew the feeling of those scars just as he did the slashing lines between them. There was nothing pretty about them, but Neil didn't care. Not really. It wasn't for shame that he wore the armbands Andrew had given him months before.

Laying on his back with his hand raised over his head, Neil turned to tip his palm before his eyes. No scars there. No paper thin lines that stung with every movement. They'd faded too, just as so much else had faded, but completely this time. If Neil stared at only this, only the absence of the wounds Lola had left on the inside of his hand, he could almost pretend they hadn't been there at all.

He tipped his hand again. Scars. Another turn. No scars. It was an oddly soothing, hypnotic habit, and one he'd found himself falling into on the nights when he couldn't immediately fall to sleep. The pillow under his head might be soft, the bed warm but not hot, and the mattress far more comfortable than that of the countless shoddy motels he'd slept in, but even so. Sometimes it was needed. Sometimes it was lulling enough that his eyes drooped closed and he could tuck both hands to his chest and forget about scars entirely.

Other times, the hypnotic twisting and tilting of his wrist were interrupted.

Andrew's hand extended alongside Neil's and caught his fingers tightly, holding them still. The line of his arm, pale and exposed of his own armband in the night and privacy of their room, was almost as marked as Neil's own. Glancing sidelong, Neil regarded Andrew's profile as he stared up at their clasped hands.

"What?" he asked.

Andrew didn't return his glance. "You're overthinking."

Neil swallowed a smile. "I'm not, actually."

"You are."

"I'm not. I'm just looking."

"No, you're overthinking. Your face gives you away."

Neil shrugged. The motion was a little awkward where they lay in the bed pressed shoulder to shoulder. "At least you're admitting I'm capable of properly thinking these days."

Andrew's gaze was blank as he darted a glance towards him. Blank and expressionless, but not without unspoken words beneath that expressionlessness. "You fluctuate between two extremes," he said. "That's not a solution."

"Better than nothing at all."

"That's debatable."

Neil snorted and flicked his gaze to their hands once more. He fiddled idly with Andrew's fingers. Silence hung between them, a comfortable silence, and Neil found it as soothing as his hypnotic ritual. It was easy. Simple, and asking nothing. Nothing, until -

"What is it?"

Neil glanced at Andrew sidelong once more. "Hm?"

With a gentle tug, Andrew dropped their clasped hands between them, heavy and limp, but didn't release his fingers. As he did, he rocked his head slightly to eye Neil more directly. "If you have a problem, don't chew over it in silence. You know you're terrible at that."

"That's debatable too."

"Neil."

"I've had a lot of practice doing it on my own, you know."

Andrew's expression still didn't shift, but the clasp of his hand around Neil's tightened almost painfully. Almost, but somehow more comforting than uncomfortable. He blinked slowly, a question or demand or perhaps saying nothing at all.

Neil smiled and answered anyway. "I mean it, Andrew. I'm fine."

Andrew grunted and rolled his eyes. Neil's smile widened. He squeezed Andrew's hand back in a reply that would speak with more honesty than words could. Andrew always listened to actions more than he did words.

But those words were true nonetheless. This time, at least, Neil knew he was perfectly fine.

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. I know it wasn't anything particularly groundbreaking, but character explorations like this are just my bread and butter. I literally couldn't study without putting pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard, I suppose.

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing! Any and all comments are greatly appreciated, and hopefully I'll see you next time xx


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